Posts Tagged ‘the opposite of people’

The Opposite of People (PDF) was my first competition submission (Game Chef 2006), and is a game of illegal art. I’m not sure where the system came from, as it’s not an obvious hack of Polaris or The Shadow of Yesterday… strange.

Players portray the a wandering theatrical troupe, and play cards in order to beat an unseen difficulty set by the town they’ve arrived in – I like poker mechanics and blind bids. The characters can cut and run, or hold out until they’re sure they must beat the hidden difficulty, and win the pot.

The default setting was cod Elizabethan, but there was also fluff and mechanics for sorcerous China and a newly terraformed multicultural Mars. Quite liked that Mars setting, actually.

I believe The Opposite of People has been played, but I’ve not seen an actual play report, and I haven’t tested it myself. It also got published as part of a Game Chef anthology, with profit going to charity.